On the battlefield of private domain operations, many enterprises blindly invest resources, but ignore that the core of private domain success lies in “governance” rather than just “combat”. Through vivid analogies and rich practical experience, this paper reveals common misunderstandings in the operation of private domains of enterprises, and puts forward the strategy of “building politics first and then fighting”.
1. Introduction: Are you “fighting” or “giving away heads”?
Now many companies are doing private domains, and they do three things as soon as they come up: group building, issuing coupons, and bombing private chats. It looks like it’s in full swing, but it’s actually unorganized. This is not a “war”, this is a “gifting of heads”! I have seen a fresh food company that builds hundreds of communities when it comes up, tens of thousands of people join it, sending coupons and flash sale links every day, and the operation department is busy like a war, but after a month, there is not a single user left. Why? You have no governance, no stratification, no rhythm, just like Qi, Chu, Zhao and Wei during the Warring States Period, fighting each other every day, each governing separately, exhausting national strength and bringing about self-destruction!Enterprises do not rely on enthusiasm to do private domain, but on the system. If you don’t have organizational management, system processes, and user tags, how can you expect employees to convert accurately? How do you earn user trust?
In war, it is important to pay attention to the fact that soldiers and horses do not move, and grain and grass come first. The same is true for private domains. You don’t even figure out the “establishment of government”, so you rush into battle, and the outcome can only be: your own internal friction, user loss, and rising costs.
If you want to be in the private domain, don’t “charge” as soon as your mind is hot. You have to ask yourself first: Has my “country” been built?
2. What is “building a government”? Don’t mistake it for a pull system or a customer service
When many companies talk about “private domain governance”, their first reaction is: “We have already installed the SCRM system”, “The customer service team is also equipped”, and “Every user has been added to Enterprise WeChat”. Sounds hilarious, but I have to say it bluntly:This is not “building a government”, this is “moving bricks”.The “establishment of governance” in the private domain is not a pile of tools, not a machine plus people, and it is not as simple as finding a few operations to send friends. Its essence is:Have you built a private domain governance system that can operate for a long time?What is a governance system? Four keywords for you:Organization, system, stratification, culture.
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The first is organization: Who is responsible for content, who is responsible for conversion, who is responsible for user experience, and who is responsible for data review? Is there an operation chief officer who is personally in charge of the boss? Is there a community trader like “Wang Jian” who can fight? Many companies die at this point – no one is really responsible for the results, and the operation depends on patting the head.
The second is the system:Is there a standardized process? For example, after the user joins, is there a welcome process within 3 minutes? Is there a label classification? Is there an activation strategy? Is there a repurchase reminder mechanism? The system is the military order on the battlefield, without the military order, all “wars” are mouth-to-mouth cannons.
The third is stratification:Users are thousands of people, and the non-stratified private domain is like a hodgepodge. How can new users, old customers, silent users, and paying users be treated with the same content and words? The private domain label system is the “weights and measures” of modern enterprises, which must be unified, accurate and traceable.
The fourth is culture:You want the user to stay, you have to tell him “who you are”. This is not solved by a “welcome to our group”, but by your complete set of brand words, content styles, and interaction methods to build a sense of belonging. The Qin state was able to fight because it had “Legalist thought” and had a clear ideology and enforcement discipline. Do you have your private domain?
To put it bluntly: building a government does not mean “building a group”, but “building a country”. You have to let employees have direction, users have belonging, and the system can rotate, which is a qualified “private domain regime”.
3. What is “fighting”? Don’t treat scrunchie fission as the main battlefield
When it comes to “private domain wars”, many companies don’t even think about it, and directly start to engage in fission, private chats, and live broadcast room inventory clearance, as if the purpose of doing private domains has only one word: “Rush! “But don’t forget that the premise of fighting is having an army, intelligence, supplies, and strategy. You haven’t even built a good organization, users are not stratified, employees are not even unified, and you are “rushing” to the battlefield? No, it’s death! I have seen many companies understand “private domain wars” as “operational actions” – mass coupons, limited-time flash sales, old and new introductions, and posting orders in the circle of friends. These actions are true in themselves, but if you just perform them mechanically, the user will get tired sooner or later.
To put it more directly, what you call “war” now is actually a chaotic war – like the six kingdoms during the Warring States period, each fighting their own and fighting in a mess, and you don’t know who you are fighting.
Have you ever been in such a situation:
- send private chats, users are blocked;
- Fission, no one turns;
- posted on Moments, no one liked it;
- sent messages in the group, but no one spoke;
- Fission sent benefits, and a bunch of “wool parties” came to prostitute for free.
This is not a war, this is using one’s own manpower and resources to help users practice “immunity”. In the true sense of the private domain “fighting”, we pay attention to three things:
- Who is your target battlefield (new users?) Regular customer? High-value people? ）
- What weapons do you attack with (live?) Private chat? Content grass planting? Community events? ）
- Do you have a follow-up result management mechanism (is there any repurchase after the transaction?) Is there an upgrade after repurchase? ）
The private domain campaign is not a hammer trade, but a whole link, from exposure, activation, transformation, repurchase, and fission of a closed loop. Just like the Qin state will not fight an uncertain battle – before Bai Qi fought the Zhao state, he had already figured out the shape, troops, and supply lines, and he could stabilize the rear after the fight. And if you send a round of private chats, you expect customers to pay for it, and keep up with the battlefield: if you have no strategy and no preparation, the result is doomed to collapse. So don’t use “circle of friends + private chat + group coupons” as the main battlefield, that’s just a superficial operation.
The real “war” is to fight the result with a systematic way of playing on the basis of your “governance is completed” – otherwise you are just “showing the war”.
4. How important is it to “build a government first and then fight a war”? See how the Qin state won the six kingdoms
Many people think that the Qin state unified the six kingdoms by relying on strong troops and strong generals. Wrong! What really made Qin stand out was that it had already completed a long-term layout of “system construction + governance optimization” before it used the knife.
Shang Yang’s reform established the Legalist line of governing the country, the military merit system activated the will to fight, and the county system broke the old aristocratic separatism; Unified weights and measures, books and texts, and vehicles on the same track have turned the whole country into a large-scale “operation system” with efficient coordination.
What about the Six Kingdoms? Qi, Chu, Zhao, and Wei are each in charge of their own affairs, intriguing each other. The system is chaotic, the aristocracy is decentralized, the alliance is pulled when things happen, and the enemy is the first to have internal friction. There is a war outside, infighting inside, and there is not even a unified command – this is exactly the same as the current situation of the private domain of many companies.
Let’s take a look at this comparison table:
Many companies do private domains, why did the “first battle” fail? It’s not that you can’t issue coupons, it’s not that you can’t chat privately, but you haven’t done a good job of “united front” and “infrastructure”.Private domain operation is a “microcosme” of a national system – if you want to win the battle, you must first complete the “unification of governance”.If you don’t even do user stratification, the labels are messy, the employees don’t know how to talk, and the content doesn’t know how to post, then you forcibly “attack the city and seize the land”, that is, replace the soldiers of the Qin state with Zhao Kuo, talk about war on paper, and finally lose like a mountain.
Qin won because it had completed internal governance as early as ten years before the war began. And you, you don’t even have a unified welcome message, so you want to convert? Sorry, the customer is not blind.
“Building government” allows you to be organized; “Fighting” allows you to produce results; The order is wrong, the rhythm is chaotic, and the private domain must die halfway.
5. Practical suggestions: Three steps to quickly “build a government” and no longer fight in vain
After talking about the importance of “building a government”, many people have to ask: So how do we “build”? Don’t be afraid, I’ll break it down into a three-step strategy for you, and you don’t need to invest hundreds of thousands of people in the system, and you don’t need to recruit a team of dozens of people. Small teams can also “build small policies”, and large teams can replicate standardization.
Step 1: Build a “minimum private domain system skeleton”
Build your own “governance structure” at minimal cost. Three things include:
(1) The user tag system (basic governance) suggests that only three levels of tags should be made at the beginning:
- Identity dimension: customer type (first-time transaction/old customer/member, etc.);
- Behavioral dimension: Have you visited the product page? Have you forwarded the event? Have you ever been in a group?
- Demand dimensions: car type, service concern, price sensitivity, etc.
This is like the “unification of weights and measures” in the Qin state – there are no accurate labels, all users are “treated equally”, and the natural conversion effect is poor.(2) SOP process mechanism (process governance) at least 3 basic processes:
- New users: automatic welcome message + first value output + tag classification;
- Intra-group operation: fixed-time node content + intra-group interaction mechanism;
- Transaction follow-up: Reach reminder + repurchase reminder within 3, 7 and 30 days after the transaction.
(3) The content of the content scheduling system (value governance) should also be “nationalized”:
- Weekly content has a theme;
- Rhythm every day (e.g. Monday knowledge, Wednesday events, Friday promotions);
- The unified caliber of each channel (integration of circle of friends, groups, and official accounts).
Step 2: Clarify team roles and incentives
99% of the problems of an enterprise’s private domain cannot be done, but that the team has no division of labor and no one is responsible for it to the end.
- Who is responsible for content output? (Content Officer)
- Who is responsible for community engagement? (Community Operation)
- Who is responsible for 1v1 private chat conversion? (Conversion Consultant)
- Who is responsible for data review? (Data Officer/Trader)
- Who coordinates the overall situation and makes a review? (Private domain manager)
Even if there is only a small team of 2-3 people, it is necessary to “carry the post”. Don’t let a person make pictures, do customer service, and write words, that is not called private domain, it is called “internal friction maker”. It is recommended to introduce an incentive system, such as paying bonuses according to the conversion rate of private chats, the effective number of fission, and the activity of the group, which is the “military merit system” that activates the vitality of the organization.
Step 3: Only fight “one battle”, don’t be greedy
The most common misunderstanding is to engage in five user groups, three activities, two products, and N copywriting.
It’s better to do this: choose a type of user, a product, and a set of conversion paths first, and win a battle first.
Example:
Target group: novice car maintenance within 1 year of buying a car; Products: basic car wash + car interior deodorization; Path: Short video/other third-party drainage→ enterprise WeChat add → into the group→ preferential experience→ old and new → to promote members.
Penetrate this scene and then copy and promote. This is the “county replication system” – the Qin state relies on this trick to unify the world, and your private domain can also be expanded from a burst point to “local victory→ national replication”.To sum up: governance first, style of play later. Enterprises without government construction are self-harming in all private domain wars。
6. Conclusion Sublimation: Are you “fighting” or “building a country”?
Many people think that this is a marketing war, but it is not. This is a “battle for the founding of the country”.
Among the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period, why is only the Qin State able to dominate the world?
It is not that it fought the hardest, but that it completed the overall deployment of the system, organization and strategy before the start of the fight. To put it bluntly, the Qin state wins in: governance first, strategic support, and moderate implementation.
The same applies to private domains.
You have no organizational structure, no SOP, no labeling system, but you expect an event to detonate and a live broadcast deal, which is like letting a makeshift team fight a world war, and the ending is doomed.
The private domain of the future is no longer the battlefield of marketers, but the home of corporate strategists.
When you truly treat users as “people”, communities as “territory”, and content as “laws”, you are worthy of talking about “war” and have the ability to win.
So, before you start a new group, post a round of private chats, or do a live broadcast, ask yourself a question:
“I’m fighting? Or is it in the founding of the country? ”
If you are still rushing and fighting, then your enemy may not be your competitors, but yourself.
